Polish Folk Art and the Holocaust: Perpetrator-Victim-Bystander Memory Transactions in the Polish-German Context

最近，大屠杀研究转向在当地“旁观者”众目睽睽之下发生在死亡集中营之外的“分散”大屠杀，这需要新的数据来源。虽然口述历史为这一领域带来了重要的见解，但当地的视觉来源尚未得到考虑。波兰以大屠杀为主题的民间艺术构成了一个重要的、尚未被研究的来源，为战后的纪念过程提供了一个独特的视角。波兰本土艺术家在战后的几十年里创作了关于大屠杀场景的雕刻和绘画，他们记住了战前的犹太人，目睹了对他们的暴行，这些雕塑和绘画基本上被遗忘在波兰民族志博物馆的藏品中，或者居住在私人收藏中（主要是德国人），从来没有作为创伤后记忆过程的知识来源进行过系统的研究。该项目关注的是1945年至今大屠杀在东德、西德和统一后的德国的影响和工具化，研究它们在波兰和德国记忆文化中的作用。该研究进一步试图确定德国收藏家在多大程度上激发了波兰艺术家对大屠杀的记忆，以及德国对波兰的“东方主义”关注是否影响了这种艺术在德国各州的生产和接受方式。最后，该项目将深入了解波兰人和德国人如何协商他们各自作为受害者、证人和肇事者的集体地位。虽然我们期望以重要的方式为大屠杀历史和记忆研究（使用新的原始材料和旁观者视角）和民间艺术研究（使用新的主题，例如，创伤历史记忆和群体间对话，以及影响理论等新方法）做出贡献，但该项目揭示了一些更广泛的问题，包括：波兰-德国-犹太人关系；德国Vergangenheitsbewaltigung;以及物质文化在记忆过程中的作用。我们将研究广泛的来源，包括：艺术品，展览文件，参观者评论，私人信件，我们将与收藏家，艺术家和策展人进行采访。我们在波兰和德国的收藏中发现的来源将受到基于多学科解释方法的审查，包括用于视觉文化，物质文化，记忆，创伤，情感和跨文化关系研究的最新方法，关注文化框架，权力关系，情感，以及我们作为波兰，德国和犹太研究人员对自己主体性的自我反思。所研究的这一现象是由参与对话的波兰和德国演员构成的，其历史的痕迹分散在波兰和德国，因此需要一个波兰-德国团队、双边参考框架、双语专业知识，以及与两国机构、来源和个人的接触。

The recent turn in Holocaust studies towards the "dispersed" Holocaust that took place outside of the death camps, in full view of local “bystander” populations, requires new sources of data. While oral history has brought important insights into the field, vernacular visual sources have yet to be considered. Holocaust-themed folk art from Poland constitutes an important and as-yet-unexamined source that offers a unique perspective on postwar memorial processes. Created throughout the postwar decades, carvings and paintings of Holocaust scenes by Polish vernacular artists, who remembered pre-war Jews and witnessed the atrocities against them, have been largely forgotten in the holdings of Polish ethnographic museums or reside in private (mostly German) collections, without ever having been systematically examined as a source of knowledge about post-traumatic memory processes.This project focuses on such vernacular representations of the Shoah, and their impacts and instrumentalizations in East, West, and reunited Germany from 1945 until today, examining their role in Polish and German memory cultures. The study seeks, further, to determine to what extent German collectors stimulated memory of the Holocaust among Polish artists, and whether Germany’s "Orientalist" gaze on Poland influenced the way this art was produced and received in the German states. Finally, the project will yield insights into the ways that Poles and Germans have negotiated their respective collective statuses as victim, witness, and perpetrator.While we anticipate contributing in significant ways to Holocaust history and memory studies (with new source materials, and bystander perspectives) and Folk Art studies (with new themes, e.g., traumatic historical memory and intergroup dialogue, and new approaches like affect theory) the project sheds light on a number of broader issues, including: Polish-German-Jewish relations; German Vergangenheitsbewältigung; and the role of material culture in memory processes.We will examine a wide range of sources including: art objects, exhibition documentation, visitor comments, private correspondence, and we will conduct interviews with collectors, artists, and curators. The sources we identify in Polish and German collections will be subjected to scrutiny based on multi-disciplinary interpretive approaches, including the most current methods in use for studies of visual culture, material culture, memory, trauma, affect, and inter-cultural relations, with attention to cultural frames, power relations, emotions, and self-reflexive consideration of our own subjectivities as Polish, German, and Jewish researchers.The phenomenon under study was constituted by Polish and German actors working in dialogue and the traces of its history are scattered across Poland and Germany, thus requiring a Polish-German team, bilateral frames of reference, bilingual expertise, and access to institutions, sources, and individuals in both countries.